AI and the Future of Protecting Hospitality with Choice Hotels CISO Jason Stead

Enterprise Software Defenders

On the 10th episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Jason Stead, Chief Information Security Officer at Choice Hotels International. Choice Hotels is a global hospitality company with over 7,400 hotels worldwide and over $1.4 billion in annual revenue. In this conversation, Jason shares his thoughts on AI’s impact in the hospitality industry, the importance of AI skill development in the workforce, and how AI will shape the future of cybersecurity.
Quick hits from Jason:
On evolving threats in the hospitality industry: “There is not enough emphasis on these loyalty account compromises. We see that challenge in hospitality and other spaces today. And so we put in all these automated controls to identify non humans. Yes, there are click farms and you can outsource to people and brute force some of these things and look like a human coming in. But wait until you're able to scale that human behavior exponentially through AI. That is a problem that I think we all know is coming, but the tools are going to have to adjust quickly.”
On AI’s impact for security teams: “It is not going to eliminate people. That is the big fallacy. People are worried that ‘I'm gonna lose my job.’ No, what happens is your SOC analyst one is now a SOC analyst two all of a sudden, and it creates a huge uplift for them, and it allows them to focus on the things that are really interesting. That is the real value in the immediate term for us.”
On AI optimism for enterprises: “I think the power of AI is positive ultimately. There is a lot of doom and gloom about the threat actors using AI. And they are, they're using it today. It is going to evolve. It is going to be much harder. But there are really great entrepreneurs out there that have visions that we haven't even talked to.”
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Enterprise Software Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.